Obama asks US voters to “turn the page” on Bush’s economic policies.

Barack Obama would have you believe that the Democrats have the solution for the economy, if only those rascally Republicans would stop getting into office and messing everything up.

Now just a cotton-pickin’ minute here! Let’s just review some basic economic facts before we start pointing fingers. I know a bunch of people voting today really don’t remember the 1970’s,   so hang on, kids, it’s time for a history and economics lesson.

In the last 40 years, we’ve had economic ups and downs. The seventies were marked by an astonishingly bad economy – bad enough that the present crisis looks like a spectacularly good day. The Democrats controlled congress, and President Nixon was a social liberal. Wage freezes were in effect (Can you imagine? The Federal Government making it against the law to give someone a raise?). Oil prices were causing lines at the gas pumps that were miles long at times. 

Enter Jimmy Carter, and things got worse. A lot worse. Carter raised taxes and increased social security benefits. The Dow lost 25% of its value in the first two years of his presidency, and we were introduced to a term called stagflation – double digit interest rates, coupled with double-digit inflation. Economists assured us this was impossible, except it was happening! The media coined a new term, called the misery index, which coupled the unemployment rate to the inflation rate.

Carter did one thing of particular note during his presidency. In 1977 he signed into law the Community Reinvestment Act. This gave incentives to banks to help low-income borrowers get a home. Not a bad idea. Remember this, we’re going to come back to it.

Because of the dismal economy at home and a general indecisiveness abroad (remember the Iranian hostage crisis?), Carter lost his job to Reagan after one term. Reagan proceeded to slash corporate taxes, capital gains taxes, and the marginal tax rate. Nay sayers scoffed at “Reaganomics”, and “Trickle-down economics.” They still do, in spite of the overwhelmingly positive results.

You see, Reagan was a visionary who implicitly understood that the way to build the country’s wealth was to let the people who were wealthy create more wealth! Wealthy people don’t store their wealth in a shoe or under the mattress, they invest it! They use it to buy things. They use it to employ people! In short, they put their money to work making more money! If you don’t believe this would have a positive effect on the economy and put the nation back to work, then just answer one question: When was the last time you drew a paycheck from a poor person?

The economy started grinding ahead under Reagan. It was a slow recovery, but it was sustainable. By the end of Reagan’s first term, the Dow had more than doubled its value. There was a huge hiccup in October of 1987, which was not so much a case of weakness of the economy, except a literal financial fumble. New computerized trading systems had no safeguards, and a sudden sharp sell off created a computer-driven panic that crashed the market 20% in a single day. Stop orders were tripping, causing computerized sell orders, which drove the market down and caused more stop orders to trigger. The wheels fell off, and no one could do anything, because they couldn’t get in front of the computers. The panic was short-lived, and by the end of the month, the market had resumed it’s steady climb upward, albeit from a more subdued starting point. 

The Bush administration was unremarkable. The Iraq invasion of Kuwait caused the market to react negatively, but as Bush got control of the situation, the market recoverd quite nicely. 

All the while, under the hood of the economy where no one could see, some things were happening.

• First, Reaganomics were still at work. The money that companies saved under the Reagan tax cuts was going to work. Infrastructure was being laid, buildings and factories were being built. The machines that would make the machines which would make the goods of the nineties were being designed and built. All of this took money – money made available by Reagan leaving it in the hands of the very people who knew how best to use it.
• Second, we had won the Cold War. Reagan, Thatcher and John Paul II had rocked the Communist monolith and discovered it was a house of cards. The vast sums of money that was essentially flushed down the economic toilet to maintain military parity with the Communist block were cut back to a trickle, and the resulting proceeds became available for reinvestment into growing the economy. Call it a Peace Dividend.
• Third, a strange new technology called the microprocessor was about to revolutionize the economy of the USA. This technology would become a gigantic force multiplier for the US worker, and to feed the huge demand for it, whole new industries were laying down foundations. This technology would create a huge vacuum full of unexplored opportunity in just about any field of endeavor you could imagine.

When Bill Clinton took office, these three things were set to explode and carry the economy forward on a literal tidal wave of prosperity. And Clinton, in his usual style, surfed this tidal wave of prosperity and claimed credit for every bit of it, even though he had nothing to do with it (of course he did have the creator of the internet as his vice president. . .).

During the economic boom of the Nineties, set off by a triple fuse that Reagan had lit ten years earlier, Clinton could pretty much do what he wanted and could do no wrong economically. One thing he did do was to revamp the regulations regarding the Community Reinvestment Act (remember that?). Under new regulations, banks faced stifling penalties if they did not expand their role in lending money to borrowers with low down or no down payments. Banks were basically forced to issue $1 trillion in new “subprime” loans to people that they would not have loaned to in a free market, because these people were credit risks. Failure to do so would be noted when the banking regulators reviewed applications to branch and grow.

During March 1995 congressional hearings William A. Niskanen, chair of the Cato Institute, criticized the proposals for political favoritism in allocating credit and micromanagement by regulators, and that there was no assurance that banks would not be expected to operate at a loss. He predicted they would be very costly to the economy and banking system, and that the primary long term effect would be to contract the banking system. He recommended Congress repeal the Act.

The banks swallowed this poison pill and smiled, because what the hell, the economy was doing great, so the risk was theoretically still manageable, right?

This created subprime mortgage securities. Bear Stearns was the first to do it. Mortgage underwriter Fannie Mae added fuel to the fire, and subprime mortgages started to grow. 

Okay, here’s where it starts getting a little tricky, so stay with me here. More money made available for loans to buy homes increases competition for those homes. House prices rise. Market speculators see this and start buying homes as short term investments, further fueling the pressure for prices to rise. 

Banks see this trend, and are under pressure to make a profit. They begin developing designer loan packages, with outrageous variable interest rate schemes. The idea is that the investor could get a low introductory rate which would eventually reset to a usuriously high rate. This didn’t concern the investor, because his plan was to sell into the hot market and catch a quick profit and flip the house before the interest rate reset. He’s like the family who always uses a credit card, and doesn’t worry about the interest rate, because he pays off at the end of the month – always.

The gun was cocked and aimed at the economy’s head. And it was Democrat legislation that cocked it.

George Bush took office at the beginnings of an economic decline. Clinton had steered the booming economy perilously close to the rocks, and handed the wheel to Bush just before it hit. The economic downturn actually had begun to be felt in October of 2000, a mere month before the election. Bush took immediate action to right the course and steer the economy back on track. He cut taxes, which quit putting a brake on the economy, and allowed the productivity that had begun to falter under Clinton to begin regaining speed

Then 9/11 happened. International terrorism struck right at the heart of our financial system. Fortunately, the terrorists didn’t understand that Wall Street is just a reflection of the economy. The real wealth is made in the factories, not on Wall Street. Under the Bush tax plan, the economy shrugged off the damage and surged forward once again.

Meanwhile house prices (yes, we’re revisiting the growth of the mortgage bubble) were accelerating. For the first time in history, house price appreciation was no longer tracking the Consumer Price Index, but was surging way ahead of it. Responsible politicians began to get alarmed. 

In 2003, the Bush administration recommended the housing finance industry be overhauled. But the democrats stopped it: “Supporters of the companies said efforts to regulate the lenders tightly under those agencies might diminish their ability to finance loans for lower-income families.”

 “The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.” – Barney Frank (D-MA)

 “…And in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing, “–   Melvin Watt (D-NC)

In 2005, John McCain warned of mortgage collapse and he co-sponsored “The Housing Enterprise Regulatory Act Of 2005”. Democratic opposition ensured it never got out of committee. There might be thousands of reasons for this. But something smells bad: the top three recipients of campaign finance contributions from mortgage lenders Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae for the last 20 years? 

• Christopher Dodd, (D-CT), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. 
• Barack Obama, (D-IL)
• John Kerry, (D-MA)

I don’t know, I’m just sayin’. . .

So in spite of the Bush administration and John McCain’s efforts to disarm the financial gun that was pointed at the economy’s head, the Democrats earned their money by keeping things as they were.

Then something else happened, something that neither Democrat or Republican had any control over. 

There are a billion Chinese in China. And a billion Indians in India. And all these people started exhibiting an unusual behavior. You see, they were working, too. A lot of their work was building things to sell to America to support its booming economy. And all these workers were making money, and then they were spending that money to buy . . . cars. 

And cars need gas. 

And gas needs oil.

Except that the oil producing cartels weren’t opening the spigots to meet demand. And oil prices went up. This is economics 101: Supply and demand. Even a Democrat can understand this. Oil is a fungible commodity: The consumer doesn’t really care about where it comes from, and the supplier doesn’t really care who buys it. Basically suppliers sell their oil into the world market, and consumers buy it off the world market. To try to regulate oil prices for domestic oil companies merely punishes them and prevents them from competing in the global market.

So gas prices started rising. And that affects everything. It takes oil to produce food. It takes oil to get the food to market. It takes oil to move goods from factory to consumer. All these things cost more, and the prices get passed on to the consumer, putting a brake on personal income just as bad if not worse than raising taxes.

Now, suddenly, the guys who never should have gotten a loan in the first place could no longer make payments and keep gas in their cars and buy food. Mortgage defaults began to rise. As foreclosures become more common, the housing industry faltered. House prices flattened out and began to fall in some places. The investors looking for a quick flip watched in horror as their equity evaporated, and their adjustable rate mortgages started to reset to fantastically higher rates – rates that couldn’t be sustained. The investors started lose money, and either dumped their houses for what they could salvage, or rode them down to foreclosure. 

Banks had been forced by regulatory requirements to give out risky loans by Democratic legislation, supported by Democratic stonewalling against reform. Those loans were now defaulting, and the banks were collecting collateral that was no longer worth the money which had been loaned.  The trigger had been pulled.

The free market had not failed, because it hadn’t been free.

To quote a Chicago pastor, “Them chickens have come home to roost!”

Failure of banks is not a good thing. It smacks too much of the Depression. But government money to bail them out, without reforming the very artificial condition that led to this mess is like fighting a fire with gasoline.

“I’m voting my conscience!”

Yeah, been there, done that. And as a result I can shamefully lower my head and admit that I helped put Bill Clinton in office in 1992, because I helped split the conservative vote.  I thought this issue was dead, but I just had a conversation with a dear friend who declared he was voting Libertarian.

Look, sports fans, I’m in your boat. Of the Republican field, John McCain is pretty much the last candidate I would have picked. He’s consistently ticked me off as a senator by siding with the Democrats, to the point that I branded him a RINO (Republican In Name Only). I listened in real time as he self-destructed on Michael Reagan’s evening talk show in the 2000 campaign.

I used to really like the guy when he was a junior senator. He was young, fresh looking, articulate, a bona fide war hero, and what he said actually made sense! But his years in the senate have tarnished him and distanced him from the mindset that he originally brought to the senate.

It makes sense to vote your conscience. But you need to temper this with responsibility.  Four years ago when Christine Gregoire ballot counted her way into the Governor’s seat in Washington state, the final total difference between her and Dino Rossi was less than the total number of votes cast for the Libertarian candidate. Libertarians voting their conscience ensured the election of the candidate who least reflected their values.

The government is severely screwed up. It’s been this way for nigh on forty years now, as the disconnect between spending and revenue widens.   The halls of congress seem like some surreal fantasyland where cause and effect don’t seem connected. The problem with a lot of conservatives today is that we want it fixed and cleaned up, and we want it right now!

Well, friends, it took sixty years to mess it up this bad.  It’s going to take some time to put it right. The very first thing we need to do is to wrest the controls from the lunatics who are driving the bus! And we’re not going to do this by splitting our forces arguing about who the driver ought to be. The idea that anyone is going to get elected by advocating sweeping reform back to conservative ideals is a pipe dream. Take a lesson from the Democrats: Incrementalism works! You need to reform the system one step at a time. That’s how it got messed up and how it’s going to be set right.

If you take your marbles and leave if you can’t get your way, you are not only disenfranchising yourself , you are ensuring the victory of a candidate who will be the antithesis of everything you value in government.  You need to realize that government is compromise and coalition building.  The guy you vote for might not hold all the values you do, but half a loaf is better than none.  Would you rather have a leader who shares some of your values, or ones that shares none of your values?   Split the conservative vote, and the liberals take office.  You will be governed by the one candidate who least represents you views. If this is your desire, then by all means, stand on your principles and vote Libertarian.  Just keep your mouth shut for the next fours years afterward, because when Obama take office, you will be the one who helped put him there.

 The United States stands for freedom and liberty throughout the world.  It was once observed to me by a Filipino municipal leader that “The world is circled with the graves of Americans who died to set other people free.”  The use of force is always a last resort, because inevitably innocent people get hurt.  But when the enemies of freedom and justice choose to use force to achieve their ends, the sad fact is that force is often the only way to stop them.  In the post WWII world all too often those enemies do not wear a uniform, swear allegiance to no government, and exhibit a shocking disregard for life to achieve their ends.  This places innocents at even greater risk.  For the West to hang fire because innocent people might get hurt means surrendering the battlefield to the enemy, and inevitably history has shown us that this leads to even greater suffering and loss of life.

Whenever a disaster occurs, the United States is often the first one the scene with the most to offer.  The United States is the only country in history which has publicly prosecuted and convicted its own soldiers for war crimes.  In the last 70 years the United Sates has militarily conquered more territory than any other power in history – and we have returned all of it back to its rightful owners, keeping only small pieces on which to bury our honored dead. Mr. Anderson would have you believe that the world would be better off without America.  I invite Mr. Anderson to relocate to the socialist paradise of North Korea.  

In the first place the charge of 30 years of US aggression is plainly false.  The United States did not get directly involved – and in fact deliberately avoided involvement – until the early 1960’s, and did not get involved in earnest until 1965.  The total period of heavy involvement lasted eight years – a far cry from 30 years. Prior to the 1960’s the Vietnamese fought the French.  The USA refused to support the French defense at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 when France asked for air support.

The use of nuclear weapons to end WWII in the Pacific was horrible, but in the long run saved a hundred times more lives, and countless suffering.  It’s an axiom of warfare that a brief, shockingly violent, decisive action is far less costly for all concerned in the long run than a drawn out campaign that lacks resolve.

 Claim 3: More than 4,000 innocent civilians killed in Panama during the US invasion in 1989. 

 The US invaded Panama in 1989 to depose and capture the Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega on international drug trafficking charges.  Noriega’s power in Panama was held by force of arms, having been defeated in a democratic election by a 3-1 margin by Guillermo Endara the previous May.  This was not an invasion of aggression, but to support the popular will of the Panamanian people and enforce international law.

This number is derived from a controversial shock journalism piece that the news show 60 Minutes aired on Sept 23, 1990.  Not known for its journalistic integrity or objectivity, 60 Minutes interviewed obviously biased Panamanian officials who made outrageous claims without any substantiation, and then presented those claims as undisputed fact.  The actual tally ranges from 202 to 700 civilian deaths during the invasion.  Residents of the densely populated El Chorillo barrio area near Manuel Noreiga’s palace stated that the fires which took a majority of the lives were started by Noreiga forces.

Claim 4: Over 500,000 people were killed in Laos when America subjected civilians to "secret bombing" from 1964 to 1973, dropping over two million tons of bombs on the country.  Over one fourth of the population also became refugees.

In spite of the publicity that Vietnam garnered in Indochina during the 1960’s, the communist insurgency in Laos represented the key conflict to the whole region.  Communist Pathet Lao forces, supported by China and North Vietnam, waged unrestricted warfare on the peace and freedom loving Hmong people of the Plaines des Jarres region. Whereas Vietnam was a civil war among an ethnically and culturally homogeneous people, the Laotian conflict was an outright war of genocide against the Hmong.  US air operations over Laos took two forms.    Low technology tactical air cover was provided to Hmong military units, flown by a combination of Hmong pilots, CIA contractors and regular USAF with Hmong or CIA tactical control.  In the relatively uninhabited southeastern panhandle area, an extensive air campaign was waged to interdict supplies from North Vietnam to the south, bypassing the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone of Vietnam.

Most of the casualties suffered in Mr. Anderson’s highly speculative and inflated figure were North Vietnamese regular army soldiers ferrying supplies down the network of roads and paths known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail.  These were de facto invaders of Laos by international law.

The one fourth of the population who became refugees that Mr. Anderson quotes were the US allied Hmong peoples who lost their ancestral lands to the communist Pathet Lao and resettled in . . . you guessed it, the United States of America.  I know and often work daily with some of these people.

Claim 5: 100,000 people were murdered in South Korea prior to the Korean War by a brutal repression supported by US forces in 1945. This includes between 30,000 and 40,000 killed during the suppression of a peasant revolt on Cheju Island.

Mr. Anderson’s “brutal repression” was a counterinsurgency effort on the part of the South Korean government to quell a revolution sponsored by the Soviet government.  This was an effort to destabilize the government of South Korea and open the way for a communist takeover.  Those “innocents” murdered were armed revolutionaries attempting to overthrow the legitimate government of South Korea by force.  No attempt was made by these communist insurgents to negotiate or have a say in the government of South Korea. Their goal, dictated from Moscow, was the total subjugation of Korea under a communist regime, securing an additional jewel in the crown of Soviet Hegemony.

When this insurgency failed to accomplish its goals, communist North Korea invaded South Korea and attempted to establish a communist dictatorship by conventional warfare.    

Claim 6: Up to 4,500,000 Koreans were killed from 1951 to 1953 during America's massive slaughter in the Korean War.

 “America’s massive Slaughter???”  Not Russia’s Slaughter?  Not China’s slaughter?

In July of 1951, North Korean forces attacked across the 38^th parallel in the most blatant act of aggression since Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.  United Nations forces – primarily South Korean and American – were forced back to a tiny perimeter around the city of Pusan.  Whose slaughter was it?  I find it amazing that a defensive action against an unprovoked attack makes America at fault for this. 

Claim 7: 200,000 were murdered when the Philippines were conquered by American forces. This took place just over 100 years ago.

"When I next realized that the Philippines had dropped into our laps I confess I did not know what to do with them... And one night late it came to me this way... 1) That we could not give them back to Spain- that would be cowardly and dishonorable; 2) that we could not turn them over to France and Germany - our commercial rivals in the Orient - that would be bad business and discreditable; 3) that we not leave them to themselves - they are unfit for self-government - and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain's wars; and 4) that there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God's grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow-men for whom Christ also died."—U.S. President William McKinley

McKinley was absolutely right in this regard.  The Philippines was not at that time prepared to be independent.  To really appreciate this, you must be familiar with the Philippines.  The country is one of the most balkanized in the world.  The inhabitants speak no less than 70 different languages.  When the country was ceded to the US by Spain, there were still active head hunter tribes in the rural areas – My own father-in-law was one of those head hunters!

Had the US granted Aguinaldo immediate independence, the result of trying to unify the Filipino people under a single government would have been a civil war with casualties and brutalities that would have made the Philippine-American war seem like a tea party.  You are dealing with a culture of passionate people with no sense of fair play in the western understanding of the term for whom violence lurks just below the surface.  The decision to administer the Philippines in order to prevent a genocidal bloodbath is mirrored in the post-Saddam occupation of Iraq, where the bulk of deaths are caused in Iraqi-on-Iraqi conflicts.

Under the Tydings-McDuffie Act the Philippines was made a transitional commonwealth in preparation for Philippine independence, which was granted on schedule in spite of the disruption of the transition caused by WWII and Japanese occupation.  The USA built roads, schools, government buildings and civic works on behalf of the Filipino people in order to better prepare them for independence.  To this day the Philippines and the United States share a very close relationship

Claim 8: 23,000 people were slaughtered in Taiwan by US-backed, trained, equipped, and funded forces (Chiang's Nationalist army) during the late 1940s.

Taken in a vacuum, Mr. Anderson would have you believe that the USA trained, backed and funded the Kuomintang Army for the express purpose of subjugating Taiwan.  The fact is that this occurred during WWII, when China was an American ally and the primary front against Japanese aggression.  The bulk of the Japanese army spent WWII fighting in China.  The USA supplied and trained Chinese soldiers, the same as it supplied the Soviet Union to assist in the defeat of Germany.

The United States had no hand in the administration of post-war Taiwan, and cannot be held responsible in any way for any wrongdoing there at the end of the war.  It’s disingenuous for Mr. Anderson to make these sorts of accusations without explaining what the USA should have done differently.  Should the USA have refrained from supporting the KMT during WWII, ensuring a Japanese victory on the mainland, and subsequent ability to resist the US advance through the Pacific?  How exactly, in Mr. Anderson’s opinion, was the USA to have foreseen the abuses in Taiwan as a result of aiding its ally?

 Claim 9:  700,000 Indonesians (mostly landless peasants) were murdered in 1965 when the US armed and supported General Suharto.

The United States supported the Suharto government with arms and aid as part of the general campaign to contain communism.  The US recognized the abuses perpetrated by Suharto, but was essentially powerless to affect Indonesian policy.  The US had learned through its experiences in Vietnam.  The struggle for power in southeast Asia after WWII had less to do with ideology than expediency.  In 1945, the US had the opportunity to support Ho Chi Minh in his quest for Vietnamese independence.  Failing to secure US support, he easily went to Russia and China.  The USA did not want to see that replayed in strategically critical Indonesia.  Likewise, US interference in the perceived abuses by Vietnam’s Ngo Dinh Diem resulted in even worse abuses by his successors, as well as fomenting chaos in the government in the middle of a communist insurgency.

Claim 10:  200,000 were slaughtered in East Timor in 1975 by General Suharto with US support.

Claim 13: Over 1,700,000 Iraqis have been killed by US bombings and sanctions, mostly women and children.

Non-combat casualties from bombing are considered collateral damage.  By any measure, the collateral damage from the US use of air power in Iraq has been extremely low.  What there has been has been a result of Iraq taking a lesson from Vietnam and placing high value targets in close proximity to population centers, to maximize the propaganda potential if the targets are hit.  I personally have no sympathy for some of the civilian casualties.  If a known terrorist leader makes himself a guest in your house, he is inviting a retaliatory strike into your home as well.  Consider that before you let him in.

After the first Gulf War, Saddam Hussein was ordered to comply with terms of the surrender, or face crippling sanctions.  This was done in the mistaken assumption that the leader of Iraq felt responsibility towards his country and was answerable to its population.  When it became clear that the sanctions were not having the desired effect on the Iraqi leadership, the oil for food program was instituted.  This program was implemented without adequate oversight and review, and made it possible to divert funds from the program to line the pockets of both Iraqi and UN officials alike, at the expense of the Iraqi people.

The assumption was that the stress of sanctions would spur the Iraqi people to revolt against Saddam and get rid of him.  This assumption neglected to account for just how brutally effective a totalitarian regime is at maintaining order, in spite of the example of Cuba.  The Iraqi people chose their fate through inaction, and Saddam was complicit by playing chicken with the West with the stakes being his starving population.  Turns out the West and America cared more for his people than he did.

Claim 14: Over 1,000,000 lives were lost during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s in which the US used direct force and supported Hussein and Iraq.

The fact that Lebanon was and remains a sanctuary for terrorists seeking to attack Israel, both with terrorist infiltration, and more directly as a base for rocket attacks into Israel.  According to Mr. Anderson, this has nothing to do with Israel’s pre-emptive actions to restore order to what is essentially a lawless region of Lebanon.

In the 1980’s competing factions, ethnic groups and ideologies made Lebanon into a country defined more by its neighbors than an internal cohesion.  Syrian army forces occupied Lebanon, as well as Palestinians who made southern Lebanon a country within a country. The United States deployed marines to Lebanon as part of a United Nations peacekeeping force, essentially to keep the Israelis in check.  The response to this was a suicide attack on a marine compound which killed 168 marines – an attack by the very people that the marines were there to protect.

Claim 16: Thousands have been killed in Palestine and millions (in both Palestine and Lebanon) were made refugees by US and Britain-backed Israel.

The Israeli struggle to establish a non-Muslim state in the holy land started without US government assistance.  In 1956, the United States sided with Arab countries to force a cease-fire on Britain, France and Israel when they attacked Egypt for nationalizing the Suez canal.

Since then, the realities of the politics in the area have led the US to support Israel against repeated aggression.  The fact is, that whether you agree that Israel was legitimately established or not, it is here to stay.  Palestinians today yearn for a “homeland” that most of their people have never even seen.  The United Nations has recognized Israel as a country by providing it a seat in the general Assembly.  Israel has a right to exist, and to defend itself against foreign attacks.  Since its inception, Israel had been engaged in no less than 4 major wars, numerous minor conflicts, and an almost continuous terror campaign waged by its enemies.  All of these were defensive in nature.  Israel’s acquisition of territory in these wars was solely to provide buffer zones between the country’s small, densely packed population centers and a group of enemies whose expressed goal is the destruction of Israel.  

Claim 17: Over 75,000 civilians were killed and over one million refugees were created in El Salvador from 1980 to 1994 when the US intensely supported the efforts of a brutal regime and its death squads to eliminate a popular uprising

Claim 18: 40,000 civilians were killed by the US-backed National Guard in Nicaragua over the course of almost 50 years

Claim 19: 30,000 lives were killed by the US Contras in Nicaragua from 1979 to 1989

These three claims can be taken together.  The siren song of socialism plays strong to the impoverished countries of Latin America. The less productive the populace is, the more it seems that socialism should level the playing field between the rich and the poor.  Hopeless people who don’t see any hope of making a better life for themselves are inclined to move to seize a better life through government fiat.  Those who dream of bettering themselves resist this, since they see that someday their production would be seized by those who cannot produce.

Consider the passionate Latin temperament, where revenge is obligatory, and blood feuds are normal.  Throw some Kalashnikovs into these conditions, and you have everything you need for an old-fashioned socialist purge. 

The United States funded anti-communist forces in Central America in the 1980’s to balance the aid the communist forces were receiving from Cuba and the Soviet Union.  The United States position is that the solution to the poverty was not to drag everyone down to the same level of poverty, but to sponsor investment which would raise conditions and provide opportunity for everyone. 

Claim 22: Over 3,000 were killed and countless others injured by US interventions in Cuba. 

Intervention.  Singular.  In 1961, a US equipped force of Cuban expatriates landed on the southern coast of Cuba with the intention of returning democracy to Cuba.  This action was supported by American naval and air power, but was comprised entirely of Cubans on the ground. Mr. Andersons figure is off by an order of magnitude, as only 300 people died in the Bay of Pigs.  

Mr. Anderson occupies an enviable position where the target of his vitriol can be held to blame regardless of what it does.  He somehow expects the United States to be superman, meeting and defeating evil the world over without actually hurting anybody, and in the process preventing anyone from hurting anyone else.  Unfortunately, his utopian world does not exist, and our leaders are often faced with engaging in a policy that will result in a certain number of deaths in order to prevent a far greater death toll.  By neglecting to acknowledge the alternatives to each action on this list, Mr. Anderson is engaging in intellectual dishonesty of the worst sort.

Claim 24:  1,500,000 were killed between 1980 and 1988 in southern Africa by the US-armed South Africa.

Mr. Anderson has moved from misrepresentation to pure fantasy with this accusation.  An international arms embargo was placed on South Africa in 1977 with the full backing of the USA.  The USA did not approve of the apartheid policies of South Africa at any time.

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds
                                           -Bob Marley, Redemption Song

It occurred to me that one of the hallmarks of the human condition is the struggle to discover who we are, and to become the person we want to be.  In today’s secular humanistic society, it seems that anything goes, and the choices of who we can choose to be is bewildering.  Consequently, most people choose not to choose and live a reactionary life, not taking the initiative to act to positively alter their lives or surroundings.  They merely exist, and react to their environment instead of acting on their environment.  This is not living, this is conscious death.

As a Christian, I have a guide as to how I should live my life in the Bible.  But all too often people use this guide as a very shallow instruction manual, and follow certain precepts from it without actually understanding what God intends for us.  To really understand what kind of persons God is trying to mold, we need to look at some of the heroes of the Bible, and what happened to them.

God does not want slaves.  The slave mentality is one in which the slaves limit themselves by their own self-imposed restrictions.  A slave uprising was a common fear among slave holders throughout history.  To prevent such an uprising as the Spartacus uprising of 73 BC, slaves are denied access to the knowledge that would reveal just how frail the control of the slavemaster is over the slaves.  Slavery is only possible when the will and hope of the slave to be free is broken.  Numbers chapters 13 and 14 gives an excellent and easy to read example in it’s narrative:

The LORD said to Moses,  "Send some men to explore the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites. From each ancestral tribe send one of its leaders."

When Moses sent them to explore Canaan, he said, "Go up through the Negev and on into the hill country. See what the land is like and whether the people who live there are strong or weak, few or many. What kind of land do they live in? Is it good or bad? What kind of towns do they live in? Are they unwalled or fortified? How is the soil? Is it fertile or poor? Are there trees on it or not? Do your best to bring back some of the fruit of the land."

At the end of forty days they returned from exploring the land.  They came back to Moses and Aaron and the whole Israelite community. There they reported to them and to the whole assembly and showed them the fruit of the land. They gave Moses this account: "We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey! Here is its fruit. But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. We even saw descendants of Anak there. The Amalekites live in the Negev; the Hittites, Jebusites and Amorites live in the hill country; and the Canaanites live near the sea and along the Jordan."

Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, "We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it."

But the men who had gone up with him said, "We can't attack those people; they are stronger than we are." And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, "The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them."

All the Israelites grumbled against Moses and Aaron. . .and they said to each other, "We should choose a leader and go back to Egypt."

Joshua and Caleb, who were among those who had explored the land, tore their clothes and said to the entire Israelite assembly, "The land we passed through and explored is exceedingly good. If the LORD is pleased with us, He will lead us into that land, a land flowing with milk and honey, and will give it to us. Only do not rebel against the LORD. And do not be afraid of the people of the land, because we will swallow them up. Their protection is gone, but the LORD is with us. Do not be afraid of them."

 

This is a key point:  God does not want dependents.  He does not want slaves.  We are free men, capable of making our own choices, and our own mistakes.  God wants us as willing partners in our own lives, choosing to follow in his path of our own free will and in the full knowledge that the choice is ours. 

What are you a slave to?  What bonds prevent you from realizing the plans God has made for you? 

Some people are a slave to their addictions.  Drugs, alcohol, sex, money.  Addictions shape our actions and motivations towards the satisfaction of these addictions, and thus rob us of free will. 

Some people are slaves to power.  The acquisition and maintenance of temporal power over other people is as powerful a narcotic as any opiate.  By gaining power over other people, be it physical, financial, political or emotional, you also become a target for other people who seek that same power.  To maintain your position of power, you may often be placed in a position of making choices that you would not consider otherwise if you weren’t seeking to establish or maintain power.  This limits your freedom of action, and may preclude you from making choices that may be proper but would sacrifice power.

Some people have become slaves to dependence.  When it’s easier to allow someone to care for you and make decisions for you, you forfeit the ability to call yourself your own person.  Reliance on the government to provide for your needs, be it food, housing or medical care, robs you of the independence to make your own way, and to greet your fellow man with the full knowledge that he is no better or worse than you are.  It’s the yearning of every man’s soul to produce something, and those who willingly forgo production and allow society to provide their needs become parasites.  If you are a parasite, you should consider how this affects your relationship with God.

Some people are slaves to their own doubts and fears.  These limitations are self-imposed restrictions.  This is the type of slavery that the Israelites were conditioned to, and which God actively suppressed.  Even after experiencing first hand the power of God on their behalf, the Israelites doubted their abilities, so God left them to die in the desert, so that this self defeating way of thinking would die with them.  Succumbing to this slavery robs people of self-confidence, and forces them to retreat from challenges that God expects his people to stand up and face with the knowledge that he is at their back, supporting them.   From the standpoint of a parent, I am thinking about the child that takes counsel of their fears, and doesn’t join the games of the other children.  We want that child to overcome their fears, because we know that they would have more fun in doing so, and we recognize that the ability to overcome fear and face a challenge is necessary in adult life.

God does not want people who will whimper and cringe when wrong is done to them.  He prefers people who are capable of standing up and looking their oppressors in the eye, and declaring that “If you lay a hand on me or mine, I will kill you!”  Jesus taught us in the sermon on the mount to be humble, be meek, to turn the other cheek; but taken in the context of the Old Testament, he meant for us to do so from a position of strength and confidence, not submission. 

The prime example of the godly man is King David.  King David was confident and self-assured.  He was not arrogant, and recognized that sometimes it’s better to retreat from a situation which presents a lose-lose solution.  The Davidic story serves as the basis for the Arthurian metaphor.  As long as David followed what he knew to be the path God had chosen, Israel prospered.  When David deviated from that path to satisfy his own desires and ambitions, Israel suffered.

It’s my belief that much of the suffering in the world today is because we have strayed so far off the path that we’re not even sure where it is any more.  Before we find the path to the promised land, we first have to divest ourselves of our slave mentalities.

Mecca is the most important city in Islam. Mecca is the site of the Ka’aba, the holy temple towards which all Muslims pray daily, and to which each Muslim is obligated to make a pilgrimage at least once in their life. To Muslims, Mecca is the center of Islam, and therefore the center of the universe.

Mecca is a city located approximately 40 miles inland from the modern port city of Jeddah, in the western coastal range of Saudi Arabia. It has very little in the way of natural resources, and a very modest water supply. It has sprawled out from it’s original cradle nestled in a narrow, dry, and stony valley a quarter of a mile wide and a mile and a half long. The mountains on either side are rugged and devoid of vegetation, naked.  Free of human intervention, Mecca is sterile. There was too little water for agriculture.  In the 7th century there were no trees and far too little grass for productive grazing.

The earliest accounts we have of Mecca come from Islamic texts. Ibn Ishaq records the history of Qusay of the Quraysh, who wrested control of the polytheistic temple of the Ka’aba from the Khuza'a tribe sometime in the 4th century CE. The earliest substantiated reference to Mecca outside of Islamic scripture occurs in the Continuatio Byzantia Arabica, which is a source dating from early in the reign of the caliph Hisham, who ruled between 724-743 A.D.

There is no archeological or historical evidence to substantiate continuous human occupation in Mecca prior to the 4th century CE. Much of the archeological value of the site has been lost due to development performed to provide hospitality to the ever increasing millions of Pilgrims who attend the hajj each year. Saudi Arabian antiquities officials prohibit archeological study of the site on the basis that it is a holy place.

Islamic accounts imply that Mecca was an important hub of trade and a crossroads for caravans in Arabia in the 6th century. This view has been accepted uncritically and accepted throughout the west, almost to the point that it is considered a postulate, and not open to examination. This acceptance allows the importance of Mecca to be inflated, and places Mecca on the map as a place to be reckoned with in History.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The only conceivable trade route that may have traversed Arabia is the route from the Greco-Roman empires to the Indian subcontinent. There is simply nothing in southern Arabia, Yemen or Oman that would have attracted enough mercantile interest to cause trade caravans to ply the route through Mecca. All trade from the Mediterranean to India would have doubtless used the sea route down the Red Sea, and circumnavigating Arabia. This route would have been faster, and the conditions predictable. Sandstorms, navigation, and water supply would have made the overland route problematic for the serious merchant. A single ship with a couple of dozen crew would carry far more goods very economically, compared to a string of a hundred camels and their attendant drivers and logistics requirements.

If you look at a map of Southwest Asia, you can easily see that Mecca is on the way to nowhere. It lies in a mountain chain that makes travel difficult, off the beaten path between north and south. Jeddah in the 7th century was not the port city it is today, it was little more than a small fishing village, so there is no east-west imperative to move goods through Mecca.

Mecca had a small spring of fresh water to support it, and did have a local attraction, as it was the local seat of the polytheist Arab religious tradition. It had a modest temple dedicated to the local moon god worship which local Bedouins would periodically come to worship at. The annual Hajj to the temple of Mecca was the only industry in the small village. The temple offerings helped sustain the Quraysh tribe throughout the rest of the year. As one can imagine, this gathering was often the only contact Bedouins would have with other tribes throughout the year. Goods were traded, marriages arranged, and supplies were purchased which were not generally available in Arabia. The Quraysh operated a thriving market during this time, and traded the Bedouins for the textiles, hides, gems, spices and incense gathered or made over the year for products imported from Syria. After the Hajj, the Quraysh would take the goods gathered from the Bedouins and mount a caravan to Syria, where they would exchange them for goods to sell at the next year’s Hajj. Thus, Mecca was the terminus for a small caravan trade route to and from Syria.

Mecca was not unique in this respect. Muslim tradition would have us believe that the Ka’aba of Mecca was the seat of pan-arabic polytheism, but this was certainly not the case.  Every community had a house set aside for housing the local idols. Ibn Ishaq tells us that every family routinely kept a sacred rock-idol in it’s family quarters, and that communities raised small temples to house their communal idols. Meteorites were prized as holy stones, and Mecca’s Black stone was a fine example and held in high regard. The Ka’aba that housed it, however, was unremarkable. Tabari VI:50tells us ". . .  the Quraysh demolished the Ka'aba and then rebuilt it. According to Ibn Ishaq, this was in the Messenger's thirty-fifth year. The reason for demolition of the Ka'aba was that it consisted of loose stones rising to somewhat above a man's height, and they wished to make it higher and put a roof over it, since some men had stolen treasures kept in its interior."

So it was about six feet tall and had no roof. No building in Mecca had a roof, because there was no wood to use as building materials. Meccan dwellings consisted of stone walls with tent coverings as roofs, barely a step above the normal nomadic dwelling of the Bedouin. Other sources tell us that part of this reconstruction effort was a result of a shipwreck found near Jeddah which provided timber for the roof.

The Ka’aba was and remains the sole source of income for Mecca, and in fact was and remains the entire raison d’être for the village/city of Mecca. Control of this temple implied control of the entire economy of Mecca. This made it a highly sought after prize, just out of reach for young Muhammad, who was a member of the family, but not in line for inheritance. If you consider the early years of Islam as a political and military movement to seize control of this economic resource, Islam at once makes more sense and takes on a sinister aspect.

One could make the case that Islam exists primarily for the enrichment of the descendents of Muhammad who control the Ka’aba. To this end, the Islamic movement has been wildly successful!

 In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court of Connecticut rejected a law that stated that marriage was between a man and a woman.  See story.

Another victory for the gay marriage movement. Social mores are shifting, and perhaps someday someone will give me a logical case for why gays should marry, but I’m not holding my breath. I’m not a reactionary homophobe, but I see the increasing prevalence of homosexuality as more a symptom of societal stress and confused gender roles than a problem in and of itself.

What alarms me more, and should alarm everybody regardless of their opinion towards the gay movement, is the blatant usurpation of the legislative role by the Connecticut court. An activist court has rendered legislation irrelevant and established in it’s place a de facto law that is the exact antithesis of the law passed by constitutional means. The will of the people is not represented by the court. There was no legislative review, and no chance for the State’s Executive to exercise veto power over the pending legislation. It is a law imposed on the people, against the people’s wishes, by the tyranny of the court.

Justice Peter T. Zarella correctly points out that the purpose of marriage laws are to "privilege and regulate procreative conduct." Marriage is a contract, and under contract law it enjoys special status. The only reason for this status is to protect the interests of children and disadvantaged members of the contract.

A marriage contract is freely entered into by two people, but the performance of this contract profoundly affects the lives and well being of children who had no choice or rights when the contract was established. Society for thousands of years has recognized that children are effectively involuntary partners after the fact of the marriage contract, and has moved to ensure that the rights of children under the marriage contract are protected. This is as it should be.

For most of history the biological differences between partners in a marriage contract has implied an inherent inequality in the performance of the contract. In a standard civil contract partners presumably enter the contract on an equal, or agreed upon basis. Contracts are written with the understanding that termination and disposition of a contract shall be commensurate with the equality into which partners entered into the contract. The Female role in a marriage contract of bearing and in most cases raising children puts her at a distinct disadvantage should the partnership be dissolved. Again, society has often recognized this and at least in the west has moved to ensure that the rights of women are protected should the partnership be dissolved. Again, this is as it should be.

Homosexual partnerships by definition do not produce children, and there is no inherent bias towards one or the other partner in their ability to provide for themselves should the partnership be dissolved. This negates the primary purpose for the establishment of the marriage contract.

Marriage contract partnerships have enjoyed several privileges in society that are unique.   Medical notification and decision making assumes a spouse has a primary interest and responsibility. There are tax advantages if only one partner works. Inheritance makes assumptions regarding marital status. These privileges are not unique to a marriage contract, the only unique feature is that they are assumed to exist without question with a marriage contract. There are legal methods of establishing all of these privileges between two people without resorting to marriage.

The lawsuit which led to this insane decision alleged that the state's marriage law, if applied only to heterosexual couples, denied them of the financial, social and emotional benefits of marriage. Now I’m no expert of the Connecticut Constitution, but I’m willing to bet that nowhere does it guarantee social and emotional equality. These are quite distinct issues from legal equality, and unenforceable by any government agent. Following this standard logically, you don’t need to go far before you start requiring thought police.

In the majority opinion, Justice Richard N. Palmer becomes incoherent when he observes that “. . . gay persons are entitled to marry the otherwise qualified same sex partner of their choice."  Judge Palmer, what does “otherwise qualified” mean?   To me it means that the parties lack a critical qualification! Which qualifications is the court going to hold as critical and which will it choose to discard to further a liberal agenda.  Homosexuals are qualified to marry, except for their obvious gender similarity.  Suppose I want to marry a seven year old girl? According to Judge Palmer, we are otherwise qualified, except for her age. Or maybe I want to marry three or four women? I am otherwise qualified, except for my existing marital status. 

To pile outrage on outrage, State Sen. Michael Lawlor expects the General Assembly will pass a gay marriage law next year to codify the Supreme Court ruling. WHAT!!?? The legislature is going to rubber stamp the Supreme court law? These legislators should be howling in anger that their responsibility under the constitution has been usurped by the court, effectively rendering the legislature irrelevant! Instead they are rolling over like the good lap dogs they are and begging the court to rub their belly! 

When the government ceases to follow the rulebook and starts inventing itself as it goes along, it’s time for the electorate to remind them who serves who, and throw the lot of them out. Connecticut citizens should be demanding their state representatives to impeach the judicial panel, and if that fails, the legislature should be thrown out in it’s entirety come November, and a new lot placed in it’s stead who will support the people and return Connecticut to a constitutionally governed state. People get the government they deserve, and I refuse to believe that the people of the great state of Connecticut have fallen so far that they deserve judicial despotism.

From a recent e-mail exchange:

>I was in my economics technology class, when a brawl over the
>Columbia and the space program in general broke out. I was
>wondering what the opinionated Scruffy Scirocco thought.
>When you have time, I would enjoy reading your thoughts about
>the subject.

Opinions? Moi?

The surprising thing is that this hasn't happened more often. Shuttle travel is now running just over 98% safe -- an amazing feat when you consider the complexities of what we're trying to do here, and when you consider that the previous administration cut funding for NASA to the bone. There are other safety issues, and experience from the Challenger disaster showed how political NASA is -- even at the cost of safety.

If you look at every aviation rule or law regarding safety, you will have a manual bigger than the New York City phone booth. And every one of those regulations is in there because someone died. Pushing the envelope is dangerous, and when you strap a rocket to your butt and go blasting off at mach 17, every now and then it's going to bite you.

Is it worth it on a personal level? Not one astronaut resigned in the wake of Challenger, nor do I expect any to do so now after Columbia. If we were launching a shuttle tomorrow, there would be no shortage of volunteers. As major explorations go, space is the safest in history. Ferdinand Magellan left Spain with 250 crew and 5 ships and circumnavigated the world (well, he was killed in the Philippines). His crew returned to Spain with 18 crew and 1 ship remaining. The expedition was hailed a tremendous success and actually turned a profit.

Is it worth it, period? Yes and no. The drive into space spawned huge numbers of small technologies which would not have been pursued otherwise, yet have a subtle yet profound impact on our lives today. I'm not that much older than you, yet I marvel at some of the things that didn't exist when I was your age, yet you take for granted because you don't know any better. Just because space has not yet become commercially lucrative does not mean it never will. We have only just begun scratching the surface of this frontier. What if Columbus had landed, said "Nope, no gold here!", and returned to Spain and not said anything to anybody?

I get turned around at least once every time I travel, but I don't waste any time getting lost, because I always know exactly where I am, due to the miracle of a GPS receiver that fits in my pocket. My TV comes through a satellite dish on my roof. A touch of the mouse, and I can see a satellite photo of the weather in my hemisphere  The next time you take a home movie, stop and think about that camcorder you're using. The CCD array that collects your images is a direct commercial application of technology originally designed for satellites. These are just a few obvious examples; there are literally thousands of other items that we take for granted that wouldn't be possible without the space program, from new plastics and materials, to advances in medicine, new drugs, and even increased food production (courtesy of land sat analysis of our land utilization).

The infrastructure isn't in place at this time, but eventually it will be, to perform manufacturing in space. There are many manufacturing processes that would be cheaper, safer and more productive in micro gravity than here on earth. Frictionless bearings, more perfect crystal growth for microelectronics, more pure chemical process are all possible in free-fall.

The shuttle is not necessarily the best vehicle for repeated trips to orbit and back. The shuttle is the largest payload delivery system in history. Believe it or not, the shuttle has more lifting capability than a Saturn V rocket. The curious thing is that the Shuttle has never launched fully loaded. So basically we have way more gun than is necessary to, for example, service the space station. The shuttle is old, using technology that has been obsolete for twenty years in some cases. But nay-sayers like the folks you're conversing with refuse to fund development of a new lift vehicle which is cheaper and makes more sense. Given adequate funding, space exploration will become cheaper, and the potential profits will grow more within our grasp.

The technology is nearly within our grasp - in fact I recently heard there is a venture company collecting capital to do so - to create an earth-to-orbit tramway. This idea was first floated in the early '60's by Science Fiction author Arthur C. Clarke (for those who poo-poo Sci-Fi, I invite them to go back and watch the Star Trek re-runs, and then contemplate their cell phones and PDA's. Dreams can't come true unless someone does the dreaming.). The idea is that a cable can be suspended in geosynchronous orbit to the surface of the Earth at the equator, with an equivalent mass extending beyond geosynchronous orbit. Such a structure would allow traffic to literally climb the "beanstalk" to orbit, thereby eliminating the most expensive part of the space deal - the cost of getting out of this gravity well. When conceived, it was pie in the sky, because no material existed which was strong enough and light enough to do the job. Now we have carbon nano-tubes, which ARE strong enough and light enough.

Why do we need to go to space? In the short term, we don't NEED to. In the long term we will have no choice.

Contrary to what a lot of doom-sayers promote, our ability to grow enough food is increasing faster than our population, and in developed countries population growth is zero or even negative as our lifestyle has adapted to the highest standard of living ever seen in history. Population pressure may make things uncomfortable, but it will not force us off the planet. The human race is here to stay. Nor will we be changing significantly in the future. Evolutionary change occurs in very small populations which are under stress of some sort. The Human race is too big to change much. To understand this, drop a singe drop of food dye into a test tube and observe the change. Now drop the same amount into an olympic swimming pool. Same with genetic variation and population size. So, safe to say, the people here a million years from now will probably be physically very similar to humans today.

However, the greatest threat we face in the mid-future is that of a giant asteroid impact. It's not a matter of if we're going to get smacked by another dinosaur killer, but when. There are a lot of debates over the probability of the event, and whether we're due or not. These are moot. Whether it happens ten years from now or a million years from now, it will happen, and when it does, mankind's joke is over if we're still earthbound. All of life is a risk vs. reward evaluation. You can make an argument that we don't need to spend resources to avert an asteroid collision, because the probability is vanishingly small. However small, though, it is not zero, and if you are wrong, we all die - all 6 billion of us. No matter how small the proximate risk, the danger is infinite; we cannot afford not to develop a defense against this.

In the very long term, mankind will go to the stars - or it will cease to exist. We live in a unique little greenish blue bubble in a very hostile universe - and the life span of that bubble is not infinite. We had better be well-situated to move when that bubble pops. Given that there are no other greenish blue bubbles ready to move to (see "Rare Earth" , by Ward and Brownlee), we had best get busy making some, because it may take as long as we have left to get even one made. If the human race chooses to stick it's head in the sand and stay earthbound today, we are dooming our descendants.

The space shuttle today is the Wright Flyer of the space era. I just recently read that they're building a replica of the Wright flyer, and that it's difficult to impossible to fly, and pretty dangerous. Ask your classmates if that sort of a history gives them second thoughts as they board a 747 bound for Europe. Remind them that "Man will never fly." Remind them that "The telephone has no practical commercial application." Remind them of the patent clerk who resigned in the early 20th century because "There was nothing left to invent."

I personally find it hard to believe that while we're on the threshold of the greatest age of exploration in history, that there are people who want to step back from this threshold. Someday someone from Latin America will take up residence on the moon. May be 50 years from now, may be 500, but it will happen. When it does, I hope to hell there will be someone grousing that "If they plan to live here they should at least learn English!"

The so-called health care crisis is mostly invented from whole cloth by the Democrats.  They've been hollering about this for 16 years now, ever since Hillary's attempt at creating a massive medical industrial establishment fell flat on it's face.  The fact is that most people are insured.  The massive numbers of uninsured quoted by the Democrats are specious.  A significant number of those uninsured are from the demographic least likely to require major medical care: young males.  There are huge numbers of people for whom health insurance is available and affordable, and they have consciously made the risk/reward assessment and chosen not to spend their money on health insurance.

During this whole debate, I never hear anyone pointing out that people do receive medical care, even if they're not insured.  Shriners do yeoman work in ensuring that children who need medical care get the best.  When my uninsured mother died of lung cancer, the hospice and medical care she received was second to none, and no one ever sent us a bill.

Before I go too deep into cause and effect here, let's take a brief time-out to follow the money.  In the 25-30 years after WWII, we saw a huge military industrial establishment form in this country.  President Eisenhower wisely warned us against this fusion of government and industry.  Inflated government contracts with insufficient oversight and lobbyist kickbacks ensured huge amounts of money flowed from the public coffers into the hands of industry, and John Q. Public certainly did not get his money's worth.  Since the wind-down of the cold war and increased scrutiny by the golden fleece committee, these sorts of abuses have become harder to hide.  Unscrupulous legislators yearn for the glory days when government contracts can again spend billions of dollars on a government sponsored industry, and the Democrats see health care as the perfect growth industry to support this.  They want to see a medical industrial establishment, where government gets a chance to skim the till  as the money  flows from patient to health care provider.

Medical care costs are skyrocketing, and neither candidate has come within a country mile of the real sources of the problems in our medical establishment.  Anyone who takes economics 101 understands the root of high prices is explained by supply and demand.  Demand for health care is a given, and we are happy that it is growing, because it means we're living longer. 

Let's look at supply: What does it take to become a medical doctor?  Answer:  Resources.  Lot of them.  Eight years of college, followed by 3 to 7 years of residency.  With today's tuition fees, this is an absolutely insane amount of money to spend, not to mention living costs.  This commitment is expected from a demographic of under 30 who are at a time of their life where they are driven to establish life-long relationships, start a family, buy the first home, etc. By the time I was 26, I was debt free and embarking on a professional career.  By the time the medical student is 26, they are just finishing school, preparing for their first entry level position, and typically saddled with crushing debt.  The only silver lining in their world is that their skills are rare enough that they can charge exorbitant fees and get them -- which they have to do to pay their debts.  This is not a way of making a cost effective doctor.

The second leg of this medical cost crisis is our legal system.  Ambulance chasing lawyers (I'm looking at you, John Edwards!) are always looking for a quick way to sue some medical provider.  To protect themselves, doctors take out malpractice insurance.  Knowing these doctors are insured just encourages the sharks, because they know there's a chest full of cash available.  Often insurance companies settle malpractice claims out of court, because lawyers are smart enough to know how much to ask for, making it cheaper to just pay rather than fight.  Our legal system requires any claim to be given a fair hearing, and the defense must spend money to defend against such a claim, even if it's completely specious.  Insurance companies pass the costs of these frivolous lawsuits on to the doctors, who then pass it on to the consumer. Many private practice doctors have closed up their business because thay can’t afford the malpractice premiums

One cost of medical care that’s gotten a lot of press in the last few years is prescription drug costs.  Prescription drugs cost a lot of money for two reasons:  One is the risk that drug companies take in development and approval.  Developing a drug costs money, and for every drug that successfully hits the market, 100 others failed to perform adequately and never reached market. Once a drug hits the market, the company is vulnerable to class action lawsuits if long-term complications are found and people are injured. Lawyers dream of this sort of thing. Say drug XYZ reaches market and is later found to cause irreversible heart valve leakage. Some lawyer puts an ad in newspapers nationwide, collects 4,000 people who have been harmed by this drug and seeks damages in court to the tune of  $15,000 per person. That’s 60 million dollars, of which the lawyer gets half. The drug company has to pass this cost on to the consumer in the form of higher drug costs.

The bottom line is that a shortage of qualified health care professionals and a surplus of legal risk has combined to create a health care shortage. What I want to see is a candidate who has the courage to address these problems head-on:

• Take the government money being spent of health care that ends up in the pockets of insurance companies and HMO’s, and use it instead to fund a scholarship program for Medical Doctors. A lot of very good minds chose engineering over medicine, because they couldn’t afford the tuition and time to become an MD.
• Work with the AMA to streamline a course of study for Medical Doctors, and allow medical students to specialize early. It shouldn’t take eight years to become qualified to be a family practitioner. Medical students often do not utilize much of the specialized training they receive, since they do not specialize until after they have become a resident.
• Massive tort reform is required. Our system should be reformed so that the loser pays the legal costs of any lawsuit for both parties. This by itself would cause frivolous lawsuits to become a thing of the past, and many lawyers would need to find other lines of work, perhaps in the medical field.
• Lawyer fees and malpractice damages must be capped. People need to be aware that letting someone knock you out and take a scalpel to you entails a certain amount of risk. 
• All doctors should be required by law to make their medical practice records freely available to the public, using some sort of peer approved rating system by which the competence of that doctor may be easily evaluated by the layperson. As in any other profession there are good doctors and bad doctors. The problem is that the public has no way of evaluating the difference, and because of the legal environment, no medical provider is going to help.

Socializing health care or just dumping money into the existing system are both losing strategies. Neither party, neither candidate in this campaign recognize what the problems are, let alone how to solve them.

In a dialogue with a Muslim from Egypt, I was flabbergasted when this person maintained that Islam spread peacefully.  It took awhile to collect my position, because I wanted there to be no room for debate, but I eventually responded.

  XXXX abdullah wrote:
Islam didn't spread by this way .If you read about Islam and its victory, you will find this by peace .When Muslims fight any country, they firstly sent a message to its king and asked him to give him the right to tell people about this religion and when he accepted they started to spread their message.and fight only when the king refused .

Dear XXXX,
  It has been a long time since I have written you, but I have not been idle.  This statement above that you made simply shocked me.  It directly denies nearly 1200 years of history, and flies in the face of what I had accepted as common knowledge.  The breadth of this statement, and the sincerity with which you said it, is so contradictory to the facts that my first reaction was that we must not live in the same universe!  Consequently, I wanted my response to be comprehensive.

Below is part of my research in answering this question.  It is by no means complete.  One of the amazing things about the list I have made below is that in the research of any one battle, I would often find references to one or two other battles that weren't on my list, so the thing kept getting bigger.  Much of the history for many of these battles, particularly the early ones, comes from the Tabari Hadiths.

A recurring theme in these histories is that the Muslim army routinely defeated forces many times it's size.  I do not dispute that the Muslims were often numerically inferior, but there's a large probability that the size of the Non-Muslim forces is often inflated to make the victories seem greater than they were.  This tradition started with the "Battle" of Badr, which doesn't even count as a minor skirmish compared to the later wars.

To be sure, there are many cases where cities accepted Islam by treaty and no battle was fought.  Do not whitewash these cases.  Most cities usually had 1000-2000 soldiers as a garrison (2000 soldiers is the size of a US Battalion, the smallest military unit which is independently deployable).  When a force of 15,000 to 20,000 invading soldiers with a history of defeating units twice it's size comes to your city and makes demands, you accept and comply with those demands if you only have a battalion guarding you -- whether you like it or not.
Before we embark on a detailed examination of Islamic conquests, we must be sure we remember that none of the battles described took place in a vacuum. Many Muslims are quick to point out that all their battles were defensive.  Nothing is further from the truth. During Muhammad’s time, only two battles were defensive, and both of those were a result of a pre-emptive or retaliatory attack which was provoked by Islamic behavior or actions.  There were more battles after Muhammad’s death which could be described as defensive within the narrow confines of the battle itself, but were generally defensive battles in a strategically offensive campaign.
The most repulsive events here that I found were the battle of Ullais, where the captives from the battle were massacred in a ritual beheading that took 2 1/2 days, and the battle of Marj-ud-Deebaj, where the refugees who had been allowed to depart the surrendered Damascus were overrun and butchered, their baggage train looted.
I look forward to you re-evaluating your statement that Islam spread peacefully in light of this evidence.  Everything I have presented here is freely available from numerous independent sources on the internet.
I would also like to point out that there is not one recorded battle between Christians and ANYBODY for the first three hundred years of their existence.

623	Battle of Waddan
623	Battle of Safwan
623	Battle of Dul-'Ashir
624		Muhammad and converts begin raids on caravans to fund the movement. Zakat becomes mandatory
624 March 17	Battle of Badr	Muhammad set out with an band of 314 Muslims reinforced by the Ansar to intercept a Meccan convoy en route from Syria to Mecca. The Meccans heard about this and mounted an counter interception from Mecca that is said to have been about 1,000 strong, although this number is suspect.  Before the battle, the caravan was reported to have made it behind the Meccan force, and they could withdraw. An unknown number did, but others continued on for punitive reasons against the Muslims. The Muslims reached Badr first, and gained control of the water sources, so the Meccans would have to fight with limited water. The Meccans were defeated, losing seventy dead and seventy captured.
624	Battle of Bani Salim
624	Battle of Eid-ul-Fitr
624	Battle of Zakat -ul-Fitr
624	Battle of Bani Qainuqa
624	Battle of Sawiq
624	Battle of Ghatfan
624	Battle of Bahran
625	Battle of Uhud	70 Muslims are killed
625	Battle of Humra-ul-Asad
625	Battle of Banu Nudair
625	Battle of Dhatur-Riqa
626	Battle of Badru-Ukhra
626	Battle of Dumatul-Jandal
626	Battle of Banu Mustalaq Nikah
627	Battle of the Trench
627	Battle of Ahzab
627	Battle of Bani Quraiza
627	Battle of Bani Lahyan
627	Battle of Ghaiba
627	Battle of Khaybar
628		Muhammad signs treaty with Quraish
629	Battle of Mu'tah	The first outright battle between Islam and the Byzantine Christians. Islamic missionaries were said to have been executed when sent to the non-Muslim Arabs living in Jordan., Muhammad dispatched an army of 3000 on a punitive expedition, which met a larger force of 100,000(?) Byzantines. The Muslims declined open battle, but the fighting was intense in the numerous skirmishes. The Muslims, seeing the battle was hopeless, attempted to disengage. Using tactical deception, the Muslims succeeded in disengaging, and returned to Medina, where they were berated for their cowardice.
630		Muhammad conquers Mecca
630	The Battle Of Ta'if
630	Battle of Hunayn.
630	Battle of Autas
630	Battle of Hunsin
630	Battle of Tabuk	This is the kind of “battle” the Muslims enjoyed. The rumor was that the Byzantines were amassing a huge army at Tabuk for the purpose of a pre-emptive expedition into Islamic territory. Muhammad amassed a 30,000 man army and set forth, but never engaged with the enemy. There was no Byzantine army in Tabuk when they got there. It is unclear if there ever was an enemy, or Muhammad was just being paranoid.
632 Dec.	Battle of Yamama/Akriba	Near the plain of Aqraba. Khalid with 13,000 faced self-proclaimed prophet Musailima with 40,000 men of Banu Hanifa (note: estimates of the size of enemy forces may have been inflated by Muslim reports to make their victories seem more spectacular than they were). After two days of battle, the outcome was inconclusive, with an edge to the Apostate army, which had forced the Muslims into flight on the first day. Khalid drew Musailima out with a proposal of negotiation, only to attack him when he drew close enough. Musailima managed to dodge the attack, but this disheartened the apostates, and they withdrew under a general Muslim attack. Surrounded in a walled garden to which he had retreated with 7,000 (?) men, Musailima was killed by a javelin, which ended the apostate resistance.
632	Battle of Zu Qissa	~
632	Battle of Zu Abraq	~
633 sept	Battle of Buzakha	Khalid vs. false prophet, Tulaiha
633	Battle of Zafar	Khalid vs. tribal mistress Salma. Salma died on the battlefield.
633 Oct	Battle of Naqra	Part of Ridda wars.
632	Siege of Juwathah, Bahrain.	Non-Muslim Bahraini tribes led by Hutam were beseiged in Juwathah by Al-Ala' bin Al-Hadhrami for one month. One night the Bahraini forces became drunk, and were overwhelmed and annihilated by the Muslims.
633 April	Battle of Sallasil/Chains/Kazima	Khalid marched into Persia behind his ultimatum: "Submit to Islam and be safe. Or agree to the payment of the Jizya, and you and your people will be under our protection, else you will have only yourself to blame for the consequences, for I bring the men who desire death as ardently as you desire life.” Tabari: Vol. 2, p. 554. Essentially the same message as always: Accept Islam, Pay the Jizya, or die by the sword. The Persians were initially outmaneuvered by the Muslim Cavalry, and reached the battlefield exhausted after a forced march. They chained their soldiers together in the line of battle to prevent a cavalry breakthrough. This also prevented a retreat when the battle turned against them. The Persian Commander, Hormuz, was defeated in a duel by Khalid before the battle began.
633	Battle of Mazar	~
633	Battle at Oman	~
633	Battle at Hadramaut	~
633	Battle of Kazima	~
633 May	Battle of Walaja	The Sassanian Persians, in reaction to their defeat in the battle of Sallasi and the Battle of the river, fielded two armies to stem the Muslim armies advance into Persia towards Hira. Khalid detached his cavalry and encircled the Persians under cover of darkness. A frontal attack by the Muslim infantry fully engaged the Persian army, which was then attacked from the rear flanks by the detached cavalry.
633 May	Battle of Ullais	Survivors of the Battle of Walaja regrouped at Ullais and were reinforced by Christian Arabs and the Imperial Persian army. After a day of Battle, the coalition forces finally collapsed and retreated. Muslim cavalry was given orders to pursue, but to capture the retreating army alive. Persian and Christian Arab warrior groups were isolated and disarmed and marched back to the Muslim camp. Every captive was beheaded at the bank of the river. The slaughter of the captives continued for two and a half days. (Tabari: Vol. 2, p. 561)
633 May	Battle of Hira	Hira, a city of Christian Arabs, was lightly defended as the army fought at Walaja and Ullais. The city quickly surrendered to the advancing Muslims after a brief fight.
	Battle of Al-Anbar	~
	Battle of Ein-ul-tamr	~
633 Aug	Battle of Daumat-ul-jandal ()	Christian Arabs were besieged by Ayadh bin Ghanam. The siege was a stalemate, so the Muslims requested Khalid come with reinforcements from his campaign in Persia. The Christian Arabs responded by requesting reinforcements. Khalid held back his forces, seeing that storming the fortress would be a costly operation. Eventually Judi, in command of the Christian Arabs, tried to break the siege by attacking out of the fort. They were defeated in the open. The commanders were captured and beheaded. The weakened fort was stormed, and most of the garrison was slaughtered.
633 Nov	Battle of Muzayyah	One of three camps made up of survivors from Ullais reinforced by local Christian Arabs.
633 Nov	Battle of Zumail	One of three camps made up of survivors from Ullais reinforced by local Christian Arabs. Khalid’s army attacks a Persian/Arab encampment from three sides at night, effectively ending resistance in present-day iraq.
634	Battle of Firaz	Khalid ibn al-Walid decisively defeats the larger combined forces of the Persian Empire, Roman Empire, and Christian Arabs, completing his conquest of Mesopotamia
634 Feb	Battle of Dathin	~
634 jun	Battle of Qarteen	~
634	Battle of Marj-al-Rahit	Christian Ghassanid Arabs in the town of Marj Rahit were celebrating a summer festival, accompanied by numerous refugees from the surrounding countryside who had sought shelter in the town from the marauding Arab armies. Arab cavalry swept through the screen of warriors and overran the town. A large amount of booty and numerous captives were taken. No negotiations were conducted regarding the fate of the town before the attack.
634	Battle of Busra, Syria	Abu Ubaidah laid siege to Busra in June 634. After three days the garrison came out of the town and engaged the Muslims. The Muslims were almost surrounded and finished when they were relieved by the appearance of cavalry under Khalid ibn al-Walid. The garrison retreated to the fort. The next day the sortied again, and ended by retreating again into the fort. The siege was laid until the surrender of the fort when the Byzantines concluded that no relief was forthcoming.
634 july	Battle of Ajnadayn	32,000 Muslims met 90,000 Byzantines. The battle started with individual duels of champions, where most of the Byzantine champions were defeated. The battle devolved into a general melee until sunset. The second day, an assassination attempt by Theodorus on Khalid was intercepted and killed. Using the stolen uniforms of the killed assassins, the Muslims managed to get close enough to Theodorus and kill him. With the loss of their leader, the Byzantines fled the field in three directions. They were run down by the Muslim cavalry, and lost more in the rout than they did in battle.
634	Battle of Damascus	Khalid surrounded Damascus and sealed off all the approaches. The siege began on August 21, 634. When Heraclius failed to reinforce the city from Antioch, Thomas sallied forth twice in as many days in attempts to break the siege. Losses were high on the Byzantine side, and they retreated back to the city. Khalid infiltrated the city under cover of darkness with a hundred men near the east gate, and intense fighting occurred when they breached the gate. Thomas, realizing that the city was lost, but that the attack was uncoordinated with the rest of the Muslim siege forces around the city, entered negotiations with Abu Ubaidah ibn al-Jarrah, and procured very favorable conditions for the surrender of Damascus. Khalid attempted to claim that the city fell by conquest, but Abu Ubaidah impressed on him that if word got out that the city was looted, residents slaughtered and captives taken after surrendering, no city would ever surrender to Muslims again.
634	Battle of Saniyyat-ul-Uqab	12,000 Byzantines were defeated in an attempt to break the siege of Damascus in a battle 20 miles north of the city
634	Battle of Marj-ud-Deebaj	Thousands of refugees and byzantine commanders who had departed from Damascus under the terms of surrender were followed by Khalid. The terms declared that they would be allowed to peacefully depart and that a guarantee of peace would be in place for three days. When the guarantee expired, Khalid’s cavalry descended on the column in the rain just outside of Antioch and surrounded it. There were far too many Byzantines for the four thousand cavalry to contain, and many made it through the encirclement to the safety of Antioch. The Muslims captured all of the baggage and numerous captives, both men and women. The Byzantine commander Thomas was killed in a duel with Khalid.
634		Death of Hadrat Abu Bakr. Hadrat Umar Farooq becomes the Caliph. Khalid is recalled by the new Caliph
634 Sept	Battle of Namaraq	near modern day Kufa
634	Battle of Saqatia	~
634	Battle of Namraq	~
634	Battle of Kasker	~
634 Nov 28	Battle of the Bridge (Al Jisr)	Abu Ubaid crossed the Euphrates on a pontoon bridge. Initial contact with the Persian forces and their war elephants caused a loss of cohesion in the Muslim ranks. Abu Ubaid was killed and 2/3 of his force killed or dispersed. The Persian exploitation of this victory was halted by a coup in the Persian capitol.
635	Battle of Buwaib	~
635 Jan	Battle of Fahl	Jordan valley of Syria
635-636	Siege of Emesa	Emperor Heraclius reinforced the garrison at Emesa and Qinnasrin, repudiating the agreement the governors had made to pay the Jizya in return for peace. The Muslims lad siege to the city for four months. In March, the Byzantine general Harbees attacked out of the city and initially routed the Muslims. They regrouped and drove him back to the city. The following day the City forces were lured out of the city by the ruse of the Muslims looking as if they were retreating, and were defeated in detail. The city surrendered.
636 Aug	Battle of Yarmouk	Decisive battle against a Byzantine coalition army 65km from the Golan heights. 6 days of battle, ending in a Muslim cavalry flank attack that routed the Byzantines. As the shattered Byzantine formations quit the field, they were pursued by the Muslims and slaughtered. No prisoners were taken.
636	Conquest of Madain	~
637 april	Conquest of Jerusalem	Jerusalem was besieged for four months. Patriarch of Jerusalem Sophronius agreed to surrender the city and pay the Jizya. He negotiated the surrender directly with Caliph Umar.
637	Battle of Hazir	Khalid marched with 17,000 men on Qinnasrin in Syria. Meenas of the Byzantines recognized that he would be besieged and eventually have to surrender if he remained it he city, and met Khalid at Hazir, 3 miles west of Qinnasrin. Meenas was killed early on, and the Byzantine infantry was quickly outmaneuvered by the Muslims, and the entire force lost.
637	Battle of Aleppo	After meeting the advancing Muslim army 6 miles south of the city and being bested, Byzantine general Joachim retreated to the fortifications at Aleppo. After a four-month siege, and realizing that Heraclius was not going to be able to relieve the garrison, the Byzantines surrendered on terms. The garrison departed freely.
637	Battle of Iron Bridge	The defenders of Antioch met the advancing Muslim armies at the river Orontes, and were defeated. The defenders retreated to Antioch, where they were besieged until they surrendered on Oct 30.
637 july-oct	Battle of Qadisiyyah	Sa`d ibn Abi Waqqas of the Quraysh commanding a force of approximately 25,000 Muslims. Ordered by Caliph Umar to halt at al-Qadisiyyah, 30 miles away from Kufah. Ambassadors were sent forth to meet with Emperor Yazdgerd III to invite the Persians to Islam. Insults were exchanged, and Yazdgerd sent them packing. As preparations for battle commenced on both sides, more peace negotiations were opened. At the height of tensions, in discussions between Rostam Farrokhzad and Mughirah bin Zurarah, the Persians intimated that a remuneration might be made if the Arabs went back the way they came. Mughirah refused, and was adamant that the only acceptable response from the Persians was to accept Islam or pay the jizhya. The next morning the Muslims attacked the Persians, who were deployed in battle order on the field. The Persians employed war elephants, which made up for their numerical inferiority. The battle lasted for four days. Muslim reinforcements arrived from Syria on the second and third days. By the fourth day the battle was a draw, when the Muslims mounted a desperate push to seize the commander, Rostam Farrokhzad. The push worked. The Muslims cut off his head and displayed it, causing the Persians to break and flee.
637	Battle of Jalula	~
638	Conquest of Jazirah
639	Conquest of Khuizistan	Entry to Egypt
640 6 April	Battle of Babylon	Muslims under Amr laid siege to Babylon (a city in Byzantine Egypt), which after a small effort at negotiation, was taken by storm on Good Friday.
640 July	Battle of Heliopolis	Theodore of the Byzantines is defeated by the superior maneuverability of Amr’s cavalry, sealing the fate of Byzantine Egypt.
642	Battle of Rayy	in Persia
642	Battle of Nihawand	Persian King Yazdgerd III had about 150,000 men, versus a Muslim army about 30,000. The Persians were outmaneuvered, trapped in a narrow mountain valley, and lost approximately 100,000 men in the ensuing rout. Yazdgerd hurriedly fled to the Merv area, but was unable to raise another substantial army.
643	Conquest of Azarbaijan
644	Conquest of Fars
644	Conquest of Kharan.
647	Conquest of the island of Cypress
	Battle of Jasr
	Battle of Caesarea	Here the Arab Muslims who had besieged the city had observed that some men furtively made their way from the city walls during some nights. The Muslims waylaid these men and to their delight they turned out to be Bedouins who although non-Muslims were of the same ethnic stock as the Muslim Arabs. These Bedouins were in the employ of the Byzantines had as sweepers at Caesarea. Now as captives in the hands of their Arab compatriots, they did not take long to crack and fall prey to the threats and bribes of their Arab compatriots. These sweepers decided to betray their Byzantine masters and showed the Arab Muslim besiegers the way to infiltrate into Caesarea through its sewers. The Byzantine Christian city of Caesarea had walls that were sixteen feet high with many turrets and had withstood the Arab Muslim siege for more than eight months, so the Muslims used this devious way to infiltrate the city and once inside they ruthlessly slaughtered its determined inhabitants to the last man, except for a few who managed to reach the port and board the ships and flee to safety.
	Battle of Alexandria
644		Uman dies and is succeeded by Caliph Uthman.
648	Campaign against the Byzantines.
651		Naval battle against the Byzantines.
654		Islam spreads into North Africa
656		Uthman is murdered. Ali become Caliph.
656	Battle of the Camel/Bassorah/Jamal	Muslim civil war, fought over the assassination of the caliph Uthmaan and the succession
657	Battle of Siffin	Muawiyah, the governor of Syria, fought Ali for the Caliphate in Iraq.
658	Battle of Nahrawan.
659		Conquest of Egypt
661		Ali is murdered
662		Egypt falls to Islam rule.
666	Sicily is attacked by Muslims
674-678	First Arab siege of Constantinople
687	Battle of Kufa
691	Battle of Deir ul Jaliq
692	Battle of Sevastopol	Battle between the Byzantines and the Muslim Umayyad Arabs.
698	Battle of Carthage	Byzantines under Ioannes the Patrician and the strategos Tiberias Apsimar recaptured Carthage and were welcomed by rejoicing citizens. The Muslim commander, Hassan, enraged at having to retake a city that had not resisted the Byzantine takeover, offered no terms except to surrender or die. The determination of the two forces resulted in the total destruction of Carthage.
700		Sufism takes root as a sect of Islam. Military campaigns in North Africa
702	Battle of Deir ul Jamira
711	Muslims invade Gibraltar
711 July 9	Battle of Guadalete	Defeat of Roderic the Visigoth in the southern tip of the Spanish peninsula during the invasion of Spain.
711	Conquest of Spain
713	Conquest of Multan
716	Invasion of Constantinople
717-718	Second Arab Siege of Constantinople	The effect of the Greek Fire can be gauged by the fact that out of the more than three hundred thousand Arabs who attacked Constantinople, only about twenty thousand returned
732	Battle of Covadonga	Spanish Christians defeat Moors for the first time (date uncertain 718 - 725)
721	Battle of Toulouse	Moors lose to Odo of Aquitaine
732	Battle of Tours	Moors lose to Charles Martel near Poitiers
737	Battle of the River Berre
738	Battle of Navsari	Junaid’s southern army invading India was repulsed at Navsari by the Solankis and Rashtrakutas
738	Battle of Avanti	Junaid’s eastern army invading India was defeated by Nagabhatta Pratihara and forced to flee.
738	Battle of Rajasthan	Tamin’s army was intercepted before it could penetrate the Sindh frontier and the Arabs were routed, retreating to the west of the Indus river.
739	Battle of Akroinon	In a decisive victory Leo expelled the Arab forces from Asia Minor
740	Battle of the Nobles
741	Battle of Bagdoura	in North Africa
744	Battle of Ain al Jurr.
746	Battle of Rupar Thutha
748	Battle of Rayy.
749	Battle of lsfahan
749	Battle of Nihawand
750	Battle of Zab	Muslim civil war – the fall of the Umayyads
751 July 10th	Battle of the Talas river	the Arab and Chinese armies took to the field in Aulie-Ata on the backs of the Talas river
772	Battle of Janbi	in North Africa
777	Battle of Saragossa	in Spain
811	Battle of Rayy	in Persia
1001	Gandhara	Sultan Mahmud defeats Jayapala at Peshawar and Jayapala defects and commits suicide.
1008	India	Mahmud defeats the Rajput Confederacy
1013	Bulnat, India	Mahmud defeats Trilochanpala
1040	Battle of Dandanaqan
1024	Somnath	Mahmud sacked the temple and is reported to have personally hammered the temple's gilded lingam to pieces and the stone fragments were carted back to Ghazni, where they were incorporated into the steps of the city's new Jamiah Masjid (Friday mosque) in 1026
1071 Aug 26	Battle of Manzikert	The Seljuk Muslim invasion of Armenia was contested by the Byzantines. The Byzantine defeat here paved the way for Turkish settlement of Anatolia.
1086	Battle of Zallakha.

The following is my response to a distant relative of my wife who lives in the L.A. Area.  He emigrated to this country decades ago, and has retired after a career in the Post Office. He is a great supporter of Hillary Clinton.  This puzzles me.

---

You came to this country because it offered something better than your home country, as did my mother.  What this country offered that appealed to you was not built on the policies of Hillary Clinton and socialists like her.  The strength of this country has always been that the government stayed out of the life of the common man, and allowed him to seek his fortune where he would.  This country did not become great because the government took care of its people.  It became great because, by and large, the government stayed out of the affairs of its people.

This concept has eroded in the last 60 years, in a slide that has been sponsored to one degree or another by both parties. The constitution has been shredded, most often by Hillary Clinton and her ilk.

By supporting her, you are demonstrating a fundamental misunderstanding of how our government works.  Clinton recognizes that social change of the sort that she envisions cannot be forced at the ballot box -- the voters simply will not support her ideas.  Instead, they slide their social agenda through via the courts, by appointing activist judges who rule by judicial fiat from the bench, making rulings that invent law, thus sidestepping the legislative branch.  This is not the role of the courts envisioned by the constitution.  By voting for Hillary, you are voting to live in a judicial dictatorship which pays lip service to democracy, but effectively renders the executive and legislative branches irrelevant.

I am not a victim.  I got where I am by hard work and forward planning.  I see no reason why the government should be allowed to put a gun to my head and steal that which I have worked for and give it to someone who has contributed nothing to the society in which I live.  I am not against charity, but it should be my choice by free will, not forced on me by the government.

The "health care" crisis Hillary tries to sell is BS.  The uninsured minority that she wails about are often so by choice, for one reason or another.  A majority of them are young adults, who have little need for health care outside of accidents.

Global warming is also BS -- a crisis invented to steer policy towards hamstringing the competitive edge of America, based on shoddy science and cherry picked data.  No recognized climatologist agrees with the global warming model, but you don't hear about that because it's too lucrative for the news to portend disaster rather than life as usual.  Thirty years ago the same folks were warning that we were on the edge of an ice age.  This crap is going to cost you and me a lot of money in higher costs, and it won't have any effect whatsoever, because the problem it's supposed to address is a figment of liberal imagination.

Our education system has deteriorated over the last 20 years or more, and we are nowhere near the power we should be when it comes to education in the world.  Hillary's answer is that the government should be more involved.  This flies in the face of evidence that the more involved the government has become, the less effective and more expensive it has become.  The woman is an idiot.  Our education system has been morphed into a factory of useful idiots incapable of thinking for themselves who actually buy into the lies of big government and global warming.

We are in WWIII against radical Islam.  You may not believe it, but the radical Islamicists do, and I take them seriously.  Hillary Clinton is incoherent on this, taking both positions simultaneously, and with no rational approach to prosecuting this conflict.  I have a boy who will be of military age in 9 years, and I don't wish to sacrifice him on the altar of the stupidity of today's leaders, to preserve your freedom so you can vote to give it up to socialists like Hillary.

Hillary has no executive experience whatsoever.  She is not qualified solely on the basis of her resume to be a dogcatcher, much less the leader of the free world.

I spent a good part of my life as a soldier, defending this country against communism in the cold war.  I resent the fact that people who have not studied history, politics or economics are willing to vote in the very concepts which I spent so much time defending against.

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only
exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from
the Public Treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the
candidate promising the most benefits from the Public Treasury with the
result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy always
followed by dictatorship. "
- Alexander Fraser Tyler,'The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic'.

A vote for Hillary is a vote for eventual dictatorship.  If this is what you want, please try it in your home country before importing it here.

Oh, I forgot.  You did that.  That's why you came here. . . . .